A poem that Sir Paul McCartney wrote for Spike Milligan has sold for £6,000 at an auction of the comedian's possessions.

The former Beatle hand wrote a ditty called 'The Poet of Dumbswoman Lane' in blue pen on one side of a piece of paper and drew a cartoon titled 'The Nutters of Starvecrow Lane' on the reverse.

Auctioneers Bonhams had estimated that the sheet of paper would only fetch £1,500 to £2,000.

It sold for the same amount as an archive of his wartime diaries.

The top lot was two volumes of messages from well known personalities including Sir Paul, Sir Elton John, George Best, Sir Henry Cooper, Sir Cliff Richard, Sir Alex Guinness and Sir Michael Caine, that sold for £6,240.

His old army belt even made £204.

According to Milligan's widow Shelagh, who took the decision to sell the memorabilia, Sir Paul often used to drop in to their house in Rye, East Sussex, for a cup of tea when he was visiting a recording studio in the town.

The whole 100-lot auction made £73,000.

Milligan died six years ago aged 83, leaving six children, two of them illegitimate.

Shelagh was Milligan's third wife. The couple had no children. He left almost his entire £626,000 estate to her.

In 2005 years three of his children made an unsuccessful attempt to revoke the will in favour of an earlier one that included them.

James Milligan, 32, the illegitimate son of Spike's affair with artist Margaret Maughan, branded the decision to sell the collection rather than pass it to them as "disgraceful" in a newspaper interview.

He said: "I can't say it's unexpected or that I'm surprised, given the animosity between Shelagh and us, his children, since my father's death."

Mrs Milligan said she sold because "I just don't have the space in my new house to put everything."

She told Bonhams magazine before the sale: "The alternative is that I carry on paying these huge storage bills and everything just sits there rotting away,"